ROUGET DE LISLE (Joseph). Autograph letter signed to "dear Duval". S.l., "14 February". 2 pp. in-8. Beautiful letter from the author of La Marseillaise. "You have no pity..., either for the poor hermits, or for the anxiety they feel in their isolation for the people they love, and whom they know are struggling with tribulations similar to those your health is giving you. It is giving me these tribulations too; and what you tell me about them in your last letter does not reassure me at all. In the situation I find myself in, there is no need for yet another prolonged grief of this kind. So be good enough, my dear friend, to cut it short, if need be, as I hope you will; tell me as laconically as you like that you are fat and well despite this nasty winter ; and that if on my own account I have no more pleasures to claim, I can, at least on behalf of my friends, enjoy their health, what can I not say of their unmixed prosperity, and especially for that of a friend to whom I have devoted such a sincere and well-deserved attachment... If you ask me what I am doing, what is happening to my sad machine, I will tell you that I am busy with a patriotic pamphlet, the importance of which is greater than its content. As for the machine, it is vegetating peacefully, you know who's to thank, and would be doing so even more peacefully without the chapter of memories that are killing me... Mr le Fèvre whom you saw, or someone else will go one of these days to get rid of Rosa [Joseph Rouget de Lisle composed a romance entitled Rosa mourante (songe)]."